Going Dutch

By the fourth day of observation D.I. Leslie was all for calling it off. He was convinced the Dutch had been given a false lead, but Stelle was adamant their guy would turn up. We were both a bit sombre in the car, realising our short time together was about to end. Then, shortly after noon, our man made a move on foot. Stelle followed him and I kept contact with her in the car, in case we needed to drive somewhere in a hurry. The guy took a seat in one of the many cafés on the Royal Mile. I got a parking space nearby and joined Stelle in the coffee bar across the road to our target. He sat in the café for two hours, looking in increasing frustration at his watch, then returned to his flat, clearly not happy. We were due to knock off at 6 o'clock, but 10 minutes later Sergeant van der Gaal and his equally surly Drugs Squad minder still hadn't turned up. I agreed with Stelle's expressed view that they were "probably in some pub in town, getting pissed." Just as we were staring to get irritated, our guy raced out of his tenement block as if all the demons in hell were after him. He leapt into his battered old car and hared off. Stelle didn't need to say a word, I followed instantly. The idiot was pushing so far beyond the speed limit it was difficult to keep him in sight, but eventually we tracked him to a rather grand country house hotel somewhere on the edge of the city. Stelle was using my personal radio to try and get hold of our relief officers, but neither were answering.

We waited a few minutes, then decided we'd have to take the risk of going in and seeing if we could see anything. As we discussed it, Stelle handed me something. It turned out to be a small, nasty looking automatic pistol. I stared at her in astonishment. "Stelle, I can't use this! In fact you shouldn't even have it, you're not allowed to carry a gun in Scotland. How the hell did you get it?"

She muttered "A friend at the Dutch consulate." She didn't look at me as she spoke, as she was in the process of checking the pistol she also held. But she then glanced at me and asked, "Do you know how to use a gun?" As it happened I had done the firearms course a couple of months earlier, as part of my campaign to become a detective, but I wasn't an authorised user. I nodded dumbly. "Good; well, hopefully you won't have to. Let's go." I asked her, in a slightly dazed fashion, if we shouldn't call for back up. She shook her head. "This is probably nothing. And if something is going down in there we might miss it if we don't move quickly." Before I could argue any further Stelle was out of the car, tucking her gun into the waistband at the back of her designer denim trousers. I followed her, doing the same with my rather scruffy Tesco jeans.

As soon as we entered the hotel we knew something was wrong. I showed my warrant card and asked if anyone had seen our man. Three members of staff started talking at once. When we'd quietened them, we established that he'd bolted through the lobby and up the big winding staircase to the upper floor. The hotel manager had followed, but neither had returned yet. Stelle leading, we made our way cautiously up the stairs, We found the manager on the first landing, semi-conscious, blood pouring from nasty wounds to his mouth and nose, where our target had kicked him. Stelle, suddenly very much the commanding police officer, ordered me to get him down to the lobby and call for back-up. She then disappeared around a turn in the stairs, drawing her gun as she went. I hesitated for a fatal second, then chased after her, slipping the safety catch off the gun still in my waist band. At the top of the stairs I heard a gasp, then a muffled scream.

I was momentarily paralysed by the sight which met my eyes on the top floor. The bloke we'd been watching for the last few days lay in the corridor, clearly alive but not moving, a large patch of blood splayed across his chest. And a couple of yards further on, just ten feet or so away from me, stood a tall, rangy blond man in his 30s, one arm around Stelle's waist and the other holding a vicious looking blade to her throat. Stelle was even paler than usual, deathly white, and looked frankly terrified. Her eyes continually swivelled between me and the critically injured man on the floor in front of her. Her gun lay discarded between them. The man holding her spoke in a thick accent. "Get out of my way, or I'll cut her fucking throat. I mean it, move!" He increased the pressure of the knife on Stelle's throat, and she gasped and shuddered.

I tried to bluff the guy. "Look, Ruud, that is your name, isn't it?" You're not going anywhere. There are going to be a dozen police cars here within five minutes. It's over, give it up now and you might get out of this without anyone actually dying." I indicated the prostrate drug dealer.

Ruud spat contemptuously. The jerk of his body as he did so made Stelle quiver again. He snarled, "You say there are cops coming? Maybe, maybe not. But in two minutes I'm gonna be driving out of here with your friend here. Who knows, I might even give her a good time before I slit her up." He grinned horribly, and rubbed his groin suggestively against Stelle's bum. He half-whispered to her, in English for my benefit, "I'll bet you'd like a nice big fat cock up you, wouldn't you copper?" Stelle's head rocked back and her eyes closed in abject fear. I was terrified too: I had no idea what to do in this situation. Clearly I couldn't let the bastard walk out of here with Stelle. I didn't know what car he drove, and we were less than a mile from the motorway, within half an hour he could be anywhere. It would have been bad enough if it had been any colleague he was threatening, but this was a woman I was staring to fall in love with, who had already lived once through the ordeal this piece of shit was threatening her with.

In desperation, not thinking clearly, trying anything to buy time, I said, "You don't want her, she's a fucking dyke. Take me instead Ruud, I love cock and I can suck you from here to paradise."

Ruud laughed. "She's a dyke? I'll enjoy fucking her even more then, show her what she's been missing." He took a step forward, pushing Stelle in front of him. She appeared to be completely out of it. Only a tiny part of him could be seen behind her. The move forced me to step back, and as I did I felt the pistol Stelle had given me press into the small of my back. A grain of an idea developed in my head; what I needed was some kind of diversion.

I cleared my throat nervously. "Ruud, listen..." My eyes flickered to his right. I screamed "Get back in your room!" He glanced away, only for a split second, but it was all I needed. I ripped the pistol out of my belt and, with barely any time to aim, I fired. The shot was deafening, and for a fraction of a second time seemed to stand still. They guy screamed and the hand which had been pressed against Stelle's midriff slapped against the side of his head. In the same instant Stelle came to life, as if reacting to a starter's pistol. She bit viciously into the hand in which Ruud held the knife and kicked back at him. The knife fell with a clatter, and Ruud dropped to the floor, curling into a ball and whimpering, still holding his head. Instantly Stelle was on him, kicking and stamping viciously and screaming "Smeerlap, smeerlap!" (Apparently that means swine or bastard, something like that.) It took all my strength to drag her off him. Finally she too fell to the floor, weeping. I quickly handcuffed the stunned man to the handy leg of a heavy table nearby, then snapped at a white-faced hotel employee who had arrived to call the police and an ambulance. After that I rushed over to Stelle, pulled her to her feet and hugged her to me.

She was shivering and seemed as cold as the grave. A nearby door was open -- presumably Ruud's room. I shuffled Stelle through it and made her lie on the bed. Then I lay beside her and pressed my body to her, my arms around her, rubbing vigorously, trying to reintroduce some warmth to her. The adrenalin rush I'd experienced when I saw Stelle in that fucker's grip had now passed and I was starting to feel desperately tired. I started to tremble myself as I began to realise for the first time just how close I had come to taking another human being's life; and how if the shot had been two inches to the left it would have been Stelle I'd hit. She was hugging me back, and somehow my attempts to revive her started to turn into us kissing, at first gently then more vigorously, her tongue swirling around mine. Almost before I realised what was happening her lips were attached to my throat, and I felt her tugging at the belt of my jeans. I placed an urgent hand on hers. "Stelle, we can't. Half the cops in the Lothians'll be here any minute, and we're going to have to tell them exactly what's been going on."

She paused and looked me earnestly in the eye. "Izzie, I nearly die out there just now. You saved my fucking life. I'm still fucking terrified inside, and I need this, right now." With that she slid down the bed, taking my jeans and pants with her. Bending my legs outwards at the knees she dipped her head between them and I almost swooned with pleasure as her long tongue lapped the length of my pussy. I was vaguely aware of the sound of sirens, but they seemed irrelevant compared to the lips and tongue that were now applying themselves to my clit, and the fingers that were plunging into the centre of my pussy, swirling circles of sheer desire through me. I grabbed for Stelle's short hair and tried to pull her face further into me. Then I felt two of her fingers stroking along my bum crack. I think I must have needed it as well - making love, even with Stelle, had never felt quite this intense before. Even as I heard heavy footsteps racing up the hotel staircase Stelle flipped me over, and then that incredible, probing tongue was up my backside, driving me out of my mind with its velvet caresses. Suddenly I heard Sergeant van der Gaal's voice exclaim "Oh mijn God!" I couldn't hear whether he said anything else for my own wail of joyful release.

As Ruud had been taken away Stelle had growled something to him in Dutch that had made the colour drain from his face. When I asked what it was she told me, "I said he'd better pray I never get five minutes alone with him, because if I do I'm going to cut off his prick and eat it before his eyes." My position in the force looked a bit precarious for a week or two, not because of the sex but because of the shooting. Fortunately I'd only grazed Ruud with my shot, and between them the Lothians and Amsterdam police magically came up with a prior agreement they'd forgotten to mention before that Stelle, and anyone assisting her, could use guns in arresting him, if necessary to defend life. In the event the enquiry cleared me of any wrongdoing. A few days later Peter Leslie 'phoned me to say he was looking for a new detective for the Drugs Squad, and would I be interested?

A week after I'd been formally cleared I got a letter from the Royal Dutch Police Service informing me that they wanted me to travel to Amsterdam, at their expense naturally, to accept a bravery award for my part in Ruud's capture and in saving Stelle. The following day she e-mailed me, saying she'd pick me up at Schiphol Airport and put me up for the duration of my stay. It was her final words that most interested me: "Don't expect to get any sleep while you're with me -- pussy monster!"